Bruins in good shape despite opening loss to Canadiens

Before the Bruins dropped their heads and trudged through the tunnel back to the dressing room for a final time Thursday evening, they could look up once more to the scoreboard.

By Dan CagenDaily News staff

BOSTON — Before the Bruins dropped their heads and trudged through the tunnel back to the dressing room for a final time Thursday evening, they could look up once more to the scoreboard.

Yes, they would've seen a '4' next to the Canadiens' logo and a '3' next to their Spoked-B after Montreal's double-overtime victory. There also was the 51-31 shots advantage for the Bruins.

And that's only half of it.

The Bruins outattempted the Habs 98-58 overall. It was 89-47 during 5-on-5 play. The Bruins had the puck, and they had it a lot.

And they lost. Such is hockey.

“I thought we dominated the game,” Jarome Iginla said. “I thought even when they got out to the lead, we had chance after chance. They were just a little tough going in tonight. Some nights that happens. You tip your hat, their goalie was very good. It sucks not winning that one, but we played well and I thought we controlled that game.

“If we play that way, we'll get some results.”

That's the key right there. There are up to six more games left in this series. As always, four are needed for advancement. The Bruins can take everything but the final score, put it in their back pocket and remember what they did to pour shot after shot, chance after chance on the magnificent Carey Price for the rest of this series.

If they put together four more games like this in a row, they’ll be printing tickets for Game 1 of the conference finals shortly.

“This is just game number one,” coach Claude Julien said. “You don't get frustrated after one game. I didn't mind the way our team played tonight.”

The Bruins' game starts with faceoffs. They won 51-of-88 in the marathon game, 58 percent a stellar number. Patrice Bergeron and Carl Soderberg were both over 60 percent. Bergeron will take many of his draws against Tomas Plekanec and David Desharnais in this series; he won 14-of-21 against those two.

Then the Bruins brought the puck down low. David Krejci's line of muscle men dominated down low. Milan Lucic, Krejci and Iginla combined for 20 attempts. Iginla was stunned that Price stopped his one-timer in the first period that he missed the open net wide on the rebound.

The game could have gone 10 overtimes and there wouldn't have been a better scoring chance than Lucic, with no one between him and an empty net in the second period as Krejci passed to him. Lucic fanned completely.

Krejci's line was mostly matched against Tomas Plekanec's line, including Brandon Prust and Brendan Gallagher. By the end of the game, Montreal coach Michel Therrien switched Josh Gorges and Subban off the line and used Alexei Emelin and Andrei Markov. Both were fried by the Bruins' big guns, then pulled out of the stove by Price.

Their ice time reflected that. Krejci was second on the team at 29:28. Julien wanted them as much as possible. That bodes well for the Bruins; when they're best players are at their best, the Bruins are pretty good.

“I honestly think from after the first period, we had great zone time from all the lines, and you know they're going to get some chances and they did, but I thought we limited them comparatively to ours,” Iginla said. “I thought we out-chanced them pretty solidly. … It is about wins, and we didn't get the first one.

“But at the same time we did a lot of things that we feel are a part of our game, and were effective, and we'll stay with that. We want a lot of the same things the next game, and we'll get better results.”